(Madam’s profile is a landmark in Adams-Morgan in DC, and though controversial, remains open despite the budget crisis).

If you had been on the road this week, someplace headed across the vast spaces of the interior of this Great Land you would have missed a lot, and missed exactly nothing.

Despite the political theater, our security services performed well: they were able gun down an unarmed young mother over a delusional traffic encounter with a political angle; technically, the motor vehicle she was operating with her toddler in the car seat could be construed as a deadly weapon under the current rules of engagement, and that being the way we do things these days, she is dead.

The guy who set himself afire on the Mall below the shadow of the Capitol died in the hospital yesterday. We still don’t know what is up with that, but you can imagine that somehow the toxic waves of energy attracted his last spectacular, if inexplicable act.

It would have been a splendid week to be off the grid. I find this all so very tiresome- the closing of open-are public places like the WW II Memorial (using essential workers to perform non-essential tasks)- has been a cruel and unnecessary imposition on the long-suffering taxpayers, just like the Sequestration-induced cancellation of White House tours that apparently continues today.

The latest act of contempt for the people who actually pay for all these things includes something new: the closure of usually un-patrolled ocean spaces.

According to the Miami Herald, “Charter guides received a message from the National Park Service this week informing them that they are not permitted to take clients fishing in Florida Bay until the feds get back to work. That means that more than 1,100 square miles of prime fishing is off limits between the southern tip of the mainland to the Keys until further notice.”

The Park Service is an interesting group to use as the vanguard of Federal disapproval, , but a logical one and highly visible.

Here in Arlington, the Commissary and it’s perishable foods were deemed non-essential as a way to irritate military folks, but I made a quick call to the base as I went through the pre-crisis checklist for necessary consumables, just in case the idiocy escalates.

Paradoxically, my call revealed that the Class Six, PX and Gas Station were operating as usual, even if the Commissary wasn’t. So off I went to top off the fuel tanks on the vehicles and purchase enough liquor to deaden the opening days of a fiscal melt-down, hopefully at the farm and away from the political zombie apocalypse.

I understand this morning that Defense Secretary Hagel is going to allow us to shop for vegetables as soon as tomorrow. I guess we will see.

So, yesterday was in the 80’s, last gasp of warmth for the year, and I walked with Heavy Hands weights with my shirt off under the puffy clouds and bright sunshine after stocking up on essentials at the Class Six.

I was not at the Farm Saturday due to a reception being thrown by an old colleague who has fetched up at the Naval War College and has her eyes on a Finnish military officer. She is a DC sort of person, and lived in Adams-Morgan, the edgy mostly Hispanic neighborhood that is so cool and so terminally hip.

It is gentrifying with alarming velocity, and there is nowhere to park. I did not want to navigate the Panzer or the Bluesmobile after several drinks at Perry’s Roof Garden on Columbia Road. I could have taken the Metro, I suppose, and got off at the Zoo, but that was more of a hike than I wanted to do and instead chartered a Red Top Cab to go down.

You know Washington- you are either a half hour early, or a half hour late. I was early this time, and contemplated the three flights of steep stairs at Perry’s to get to the roof. I decided to be fashionably on-time and looked around the neighborhood where the young Douglas MacArthur had lived at a residence hotel long ago, before the area hit the skids after the riots that followed the assassination of Dr. King.

I decided to walk a block or two and get a drink at a bar I have wanted to visit many times. The last time I tugged on the door, a couple body parts still smarting from a procedure at the tattoo studio up the block, it had been locked.

This afternoon it was not, and that is how I came to be sitting at the bar in Madam’s Organ late yesterday afternoon, waiting for the appropriate moment to walk up the block to the academic reception that had kept me in town for a Saturday night. Madam’s is a splendid dive bar in the Adams-Morgan neighborhood. The area has had a resurgence of life with the flood of Federal money and the tide of young and idealistic professionals who have come to live the dream.

A pleasant African-American lady was behind the bar, and she produced a perfectly serviceable vodka tonic as I surveyed the eclectic décor. The walls were festooned with curious objects: a lot of old guitars, an old portable radio, an LP album cover with the face of the young Joe Cocker. Above the bar, a de-militarized rifle was clutched in the paws of a stuffed ursa hybrid, above the sign that said Management supported the Second Amendment: the right to keep and arm bears.

Behind the bar was the chalk-board that had drink specials scrawled across, including one that read: “GOP Special: $10 for Nothing.” I was impressed. It seemed to sum up the situation pretty well.

I looked in vain for the other special, the one that would have read “Democrat Happy Hour Special: $10 double shot, half the amount billed to your kids.”

I liked the first drink so much that I had another. As it turned out, I was still early for the affair at Perry’s, and I left early. Sitting in the cab, waiting in the long line of traffic to turn left off the rock Creek Parkway and get to Virginia safe and sound.

I scrolled through the messages to catch up on what I missed while I was actually talking to human beings. No break-throughs. I sighed, as we finally got through the light and onto US 50 westbound across the Potomac.

I know there will be an answer to the crisis before our incredible though sclerotic system collapses of its own weight. There always is, and I will be interested to see it.

Just like the Specials at Madam’s.

(I missed the Specials in this shot- they are just to the left of the Second Amendment sign ratifying the right to keep and arm bears.)

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303